by Jason Letts
In the blink of an eye, Mira understood what she had seen. This was how Arent had built his army, on fears and insecurity. Right before her, Aoi was struggling to keep her head above water. Her unrequited love gripped her to the very core, and it would be nothing for Mira to manipulate that by dangling Vern’s affection. Aoi didn’t understand why she had to choose between peace of mind and love, and yet she felt utterly helpless to make any improvement in her happiness at all.
And then there was Chucky, whose feelings forced Mira to scream because they were centered so strongly on her. The depth and the sincerity of his affection and admiration were unmistakable. Even though he constantly believed himself to be in over his head and struggling to keep up, he wouldn’t permit himself to be anywhere but right by her side. It made Mira want to blush and shy away; it was hard for her to accept being held in such high esteem when nothing she could do could compare with the outrageous powers of those she walked among.
Mira could barely take a breath, and she thought she might faint. She could’ve never imagined how charged with emotion the air around them was. After seeing so many intimate details, she felt like she could never look at her friends again. And after a moment, it seemed like she would never have to. Instantly, their pupils turned to white and not a speck of light came into their minds.
“Ahh!” Chucky yelped as the darkness set in and they heard Crimshaw undoing the door’s lock. He raced alongside Aoi and Vern to the door, all of them holding their hands out in front of them so they wouldn’t smack into the wall.
“The carafe!” Mira cried, taking off in the direction of its last clink against the wall. She ran her fingers over the floor, blindly stumbling forward and hoping to grab it. The lock undone, her friends desperately tried to hold the door closed. Mira rubbed her shoulder against the wall and started scouring along the ground.
“Mira!” Vern yelled as the door started to pull away from them.
“Let them open it,” Mira said, her hand around the diamond shard.
Altogether, they let go and the door flew open. Chucky, Vern, and Aoi backed away, and Mira took a few steps from the wall to the entrance.
“We’ve got you now!” Crimshaw howled.
He marched into the metal engine room, and another flash struck Mira. His presence sent her a history of every traumatic moment he experienced, and she would be able to cripple him using just a few words. But when he saw her there, holding up the bloody cylinder, a fresh wave of his dread and terror struck her. Vern, Chucky, and Aoi, Crimshaw was not afraid of them. They were nothing to him. But Mira learned he was afraid of her, and that was because of what she knew.
After tricking him into building the ventilation shaft, sneaking aboard the ship, and eluding them on the top deck, Crimshaw feared she would always find a way to defeat him using the things that she knows. Even though he was the captain, he knew it was Mira’s ship because she had built it with her designs. He had ordered her around from the first day she set foot in the camp, and yet he finally realized she had been controlling him.
Mixed into his resentment and fear was a strange kind of respect. In his mind, she alone had proven herself to be more than his match, and she had done so with no power whatsoever. It seemed to echo Chucky’s own thoughts. This emboldened Mira, and for the first time she found confidence in who she was. Not having a power had been a strength, not a weakness. And because of that even this new power sitting in her hand was not needed to mollify her enemy and take control of the ship.
“You’re free from him now. We all are,” Mira declared.
Crimshaw stopped abruptly and started to shout.
“You can never defy our Savior! We’ll see you—”
“He can’t hear you!” Mira interrupted, shutting him up. “There’s no need to grovel before him. He’s just one person, like the rest of us. The Sunfighter army is no more. The camps are no more. The mission is no more. All we have is our lives, and even those might disappear quickly if you don’t do what I say.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“This ship is falling apart. A boy who is one of the Specials brought his power to bear on it as we set sail. You will turn this boat around immediately, or we will all find ourselves sinking to the bottom of the sea.”
Their eyesight returned a moment later, allowing Mira and her friends to catch their first glimpse of the situation. Crimshaw stood plainly among them. A few guards were outside the door, but none of them showed any signs of resistance. Mira still held the shard and its jagged tip, but she was confident Crimshaw wouldn’t do anything but what she told him. She knew he had noticed the deterioration too, not just in the walls but when Vern easily pulled away the bolted grate to the outside of the ventilation shaft.
“Fine. We’ll turn around and head back immediately,” he said, about to exit.
“Oh, there’s one more thing too,” she said, stopping him. “Take us to Knoll.”
Crimshaw nodded as he marched back out through the door. Seeing him taking orders from Mira blew away her friends, who rushed at her full of ecstatic excitement. Leaping up and down, they collided with her, knocking her over and laughing together on the ground.
“That’s it! I can’t believe we did it!” Vern laughed.
“It’s not over yet. Not by a long shot,” Mira cautioned.
“I always knew we’d do it,” Chucky glowed.
“I know you did,” Mira replied.
Mira was on her back clutching the diamond carafe to her chest. They all grew still for a moment, looking at it.
“Do you think…do you think the sun will set now?” Aoi asked.
“I guess we’ll have to go and see,” Mira smiled.
And together they got up and freely raced though the corridors to get to the top deck.
Standing by the railing near the front of the ship, Mira stared out at the brilliant crimson and pink stretching through the sky around the first sun set in at least a year. Now weather patterns could return to normal, rains would come, and the plants and animals could begin their long trek to recovery. Below the fading ball of light, the first hazy hint of land crept over the waves. Taking her hand from the railing, she saw her hand was covered in rust. They wouldn’t make it back a moment too soon.
Not letting a rust-covered hand dispel her blooming contentment and satisfaction, she wiped it off on her shorts and turned to the rest of the ship behind her. Chucky was making his way over to her with a grin, but there was some heaviness behind it. Mira had bundled up the carafe in rags and stuffed them in her pocket, much preferring to leave everyone’s feelings and fears alone. Mira waved to greet Chucky, and then he leaned against the railing next to her.
“Oh, I wouldn’t,” she started to warn him, giving up after he had already pressed his arms against the railing. Chucky, his big frame and big hair, turned to her. His wide eyes seemed to drink her in.
“I know what you saw,” he said, freezing up a little bit.
Mira too started to feel his tension.
“Yes,” she replied, and he hesitated over what to say next.
“So do you believe it then?” he asked with a quivering breath.
Mira looked back out at the rolling ocean and tried to figure out what to do. She could answer this question, but then it would lead to other questions, and before she knew it she would end up somewhere she had never been.
“Yes, I understand. And I know what you want. But I’m not sure I can give it to you,” she sulked.
Chucky sighed, putting his hand to his chin. He noticed the rust streaking down his arm. Clearing his throat, he tried to cover his embarrassment by quickly rubbing it away. Soon he was looking at her again, conveying the same absorbent intensity. No matter what else was going on, he was right there with her then.
“After all of this, all we’ve been through, what makes you think you are anything less than anyone?”
His questions, so innocent and gentle, still managed to bear down on Mira with the f
ull force of an interrogation.
“You are the sweetest guy. It’s just that…I don’t know what it means to have someone like that. I never read about it. There aren’t any tests or experiments. It’s just fuzzy and amorphous and none of it seems to make any sense. And what if I make a mistake?”
She had spoken quickly, and somehow more had gotten away from her than she meant. Chucky seemed amused, and Mira didn’t know whether to be mad or embarrassed.
“You think I know anything?” he laughed, shaking his head. “This much I promise you. I will make every mistake you could ever think of. I’ll do everything wrong, and I’ll mess everything up. That way any missteps you take will only make it seem like more of a perfect fit. But at the bottom of it all, you’ll always know anything I do is because of how I care about you.”
Speechless, Mira could only smile and look into his eyes.
“OK,” she managed to say after a minute. The stakes seemed so high, and she didn’t know what to expect next. Chucky leaned in, brushing away an errant strand of her hair. He left a smudge near her temple, but she hardly noticed.
“Can I ask you something?” he asked, and Mira blinked and nodded. “Did you know the farm master would rat us out?”
This time Mira cleared her throat and looked about slyly.
“Have a little faith in your power, Chucky. He didn’t have a clue you’d been carting food out right under his nose,” she said, biting her lip, looking to make sure no one was watching, and then taking a half step closer to him. Chucky’s eyes lit up, his face losing some of its color.
“That means you meant for us to get caught!” he said, abruptly shouting and breaking for Vern and Aoi who were laughing together on the other side of the deck. “Hey! Did you hear that? Mira’s a mastermind!”
As Chucky stormed off, Mira watched him waving his hands in the air and singing her praises. She put her hands on her hips and shook her head, smirking.
“I guess you weren’t kidding,” she whispered.
Staring out across the deck, some movement to the left caught her attention. One of the navigators was talking with Crimshaw, who immediately started walking in her direction. Composing herself, she realized that something important would have to be attended to.
“Mira, we’ve just lost the rudder. There’s some flooding in the lower decks. The only thing that’s going to stop this boat is when it hits land,” he explained, exuding the forcefulness she knew well. He wanted to know what they should do about it, though none of that appeared in his words.
Mira turned her eyes forward to the shore, which was rapidly approaching. She could already make out the shipyard and the towers of the seaside camp.
“Well then I guess we’ll be making a crash landing,” she consented, putting a flare in Crimshaw’s eyes. “But that’s nothing to worry about as long as it doesn’t wake Arent up. Take this bottle and use the rest of it on him. He’ll sleep through the crash and sleep and sleep. You’ll have until he wakes up to get away. Because when he finally does, none of us will be safe.”
Crimshaw pursed his lips, nodded, and then turned back for the navigation deck. Mira drifted toward the very front of the boat, where her friends collected around her. Vern cradled Knoll. Aoi crossed her arms and let the wind blow through her black hair. Chucky put his hand on Mira’s shoulder and pointed to the sky. The sun continued to sink into the west, and the receding light allowed the first strands of the web of the universe to peek through with its brightest stars.
Chapter 15: At Trail’s End
As the sun dipped closer to the peak of the mountain, clacking hooves and creaking wagons rounded the final turn of the well-worn path to the flimsy camp gate. At the forefront, Jeremy strayed out a ways into a patch of grass, directing the caravan to park below the forge’s main entrance. Oddly, no smoke billowed from the top of it. Not a sound came from inside either, even though work hours should’ve been well underway.
Still in his black Sunfighter uniform, Jeremy twitched and scratched at his patchy beard, constantly casting quick glances at the sun. He sighed with relief and renewed his walk up the hill when a pair of the camp’s guards finally came to greet him. Gloria and Neeko let their legs flop and stomp with no particular enthusiasm. Jeremy snapped his fingers at them to wake them up.
“Hey, come on. Let’s go! We’ve got to get this shipment loaded up. Where are the workers? You guys haven’t gotten lazy on me, have you?”
Gloria and Neeko looked at each other and shook their heads.
“Man, there is no more shipment. That propeller and engine was the last of it. The witch finally told us the ship already took off after the workers stopped taking orders and threatened to burn down her house. Once the sun started moving, she told us it’s all over. She gave up her position but offered to live in peace with anyone who wanted to stay. They broke into the larder. Some people’ve wandered off, but some have no place else to go,” Neeko explained.
Jeremy shook his head and stopped listening about halfway through.
“I was supposed to be on that boat, but I’m all the way up here. We had a mission to go on and I was going to help him,” the greasy young man grumbled.
“Yeah, well, looks like we don’t have to worry about none of that stuff now,” Gloria said. “All we got are these uniforms. And they don’t mean a thing. We’ve lost it all.”
They stood together in silence for a moment. Jeremy’s mouth hung open but he didn’t say a thing.
“Don’t take it too hard. There’s nothing you could do about it,” Neeko comforted. “You were busy chasing down a shipment that didn’t exist.”
He cracked a smile, and Gloria covered her mouth with the dry back of her hand to conceal a chuckle. Jeremy went red in the face.
“It’s not fair! I thought I had this all figured out. I was supposed to be going places and doing important things. What happened?” he gasped.
“Tell me about it. I don’t have a clue. I guess we’ll never know how it all came crashing down,” Neeko whined, and together the three of them turned their eyes to the sinking sun.
Up the hill, a middle-aged man who had a smooth part in his graying hair stood next to his wife, whose brown eyes and pert nose could’ve belonged to a much-younger woman. Behind them, one of the bunkhouses has been hewn in half, snapped boards and nails sticking out in all directions.
One of the slaves thrashed through the meadow beyond on his way out of the camp, and the noise drew the pair’s eyes to the strangely clear vantage point. A tiny shack set against the rock, already hidden in shadow. The pair gazed at it for a moment, scratching their heads.
“You don’t suppose they were telling the truth?” Jeana queried.
“Now there’s nothing stopping us from finding out,” Kevin said.
Carrying a candle and a pickaxe from the mines, they wound through the cave to the cavity with the miniscule stream at the end. The first clink came when Kevin dropped the pickaxe upon seeing his long lost daughter chained to the wall. They fell to their knees, gazing at her and the soft contours in her face that looked so much like Mira’s.
It had been seventeen years since Clara was kidnapped, and now she was right there before them, still bearing the torment rooted in their rending separation. She was barely responsive, a little bloated, and unmoved by the strangers who had come for her. This didn’t stop Kevin and Jeana from weeping at her feet.
And from those tears, Kevin rose and took the pickaxe to the bolt chaining her to the wall. It came loose on the third strike, and Clara collapsed, slumping onto the stone floor before Jeana could catch her.
Lifting her up, each taking an arm across their shoulders, they carried her through the cave. The chain slipped free, but the shackles still clasped at her wrists. They dug into her parents’ shoulders, but neither the pain nor the effort of maneuvering over the rocks made them stop. A little light beckoned them through the shack into the open air.
Taking slogging, staggering steps, Jeana and Kevin
dragged their daughter onto the mountainside. Grasses grazed their legs, bugs buzzed around the glade, and the last light of the setting sun took the warmest shade of orange. All of this new stimuli competed for their attention, and Clara showed signs of rousing from her stupor. She lifted her head to the burning ball of helium, her mouth falling open just a little. As the sun dipped beneath the mountaintop, the shifting blues and the shiny specks of a million stars interconnected by the web replaced it. Everything was so new to her, and the beauty and wonder of it all struck her deeply.
“Maybe we’ve been too hard on Mira,” Kevin offered.
“I think the time is ripe to forgive her. It was hard for her to venture off on her own, after all,” Jeana added, still panting.
“I guess time does heal all wounds,” Kevin said.
“Shall we?” Jeana asked.
And together they took their first descending steps along the hill. Clara could only occasionally get her feet underneath her, and the rest of the time her parents had to support her, like they wished they could’ve done all along.
Down the hill, most of the caravan team had disbanded. Some had stripped equipment or belongings from the wagons in preparation for taking residence at the reformed mountain camp. Jeremy, Neeko, and Gloria still wallowed over by the forge. Everything was shaded now, and for the first time in a long time Neeko let his power rest, causing his pale skin to appear in full opacity.
“You didn’t happen to see anybody on your way up here, did you?” he asked, and Gloria jerked her head to catch the answer.
“See anybody? Like who?” Jeremy asked in return, bewildered.
